


Code Complete

by cryogenia



Category: Homestuck
Genre: BDSM, Canon Disabled Character, Consensual Kink, Electricity, Helmsman Kink, M/M, Pale Kink, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Verbal Bondage, Xeno, related mild body horror, the psionic equivalent of violet wands, xeno kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-15
Updated: 2017-03-15
Packaged: 2018-10-05 15:13:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10311041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cryogenia/pseuds/cryogenia
Summary: Being alive (again) isn't necessarily all it's cracked up to be. There's not much for you to do in this brave new world, and you can't even catch up on your reading. You don’t even notice you’ve knocked a pillow onto the floor until a tell-tale something awkward and pointy bops its cheek into your knee.Ah.At least THIS distraction you know how to deal with.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dashery](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dashery/gifts).



> For dashery, who had requested kink in the context of a strictly pale relationship. (My original idea got a bit too far away from me so I had to switch over to this one - I hope it will suffice!) I did try to dial back the pain play, per your request. If it's too extreme, please let me know and I'll be happy to complete a different story with 0% pain.
> 
> For everyone else: please note that although this was written from a perspective of experience, it's also a work of (xeno!) fiction -- so many of the elements included are pure fantasy! Please always research tools with your partner before using them in the real life ;)

All things being equal -- such as they actually are, these days -- your research would be going better if it weren’t for this confounding comfort.

It’s not that you don’t appreciate your descendant's kindness!  A block of one’s own and an overstuffed couch to sit on are luxuries any troll should appreciate, let alone an entire floor in a hivestem. Everyone has the same option now, in egalitarian colors of white and black, and you could not be happier with your assigned neighborhood or your (many) new alien neighbors. But it’s the roof, you think, that’s making it impossible to read. Rain on a tin can-hive is louder than the caves and shipholds where you grew up. You’ve read the same sentence three different times, and the only benefit you can glean is that you recognize it.

You take a deep whiff of your tea before sipping it. Peonies, licorice; a dry smell your lusus claims is nettles. Lukewarm to the tongue, not as delicious as it seems. It’s the second cup you’ve forgotten about but you are too stubborn to waste another. If you can’t focus on your husktab, you can do this. Bite on the mug instead of your claws.

Your whole being feels disjointed, restless and itchy, and you squirm deeper into the corner of the couch. You don’t even notice you’ve knocked one of the ubiquitous checkerboard pillows onto the floor until a tell-tale something awkward and pointy bops its cheek into your knee.

Ah.

At least _this_ distraction you know how to deal with.

You peer over the edge of your husktab at four spindly horns and the pitiably angular disaster attached. Sometimes you’d swear your diamond is more purrbeast than Meulin’s lusus ever was. There could be an endless expanse of pristine carpet and Mituna will still somehow find a way to sit on the one thing that makes him taller than his surroundings. You could lay down a piece of paper and it would be an engraved invitimidation for a Captor, to say nothing of a throw pillow.

He won’t sit next to you on the furniture, though. You know why.

“Psii,” you say, testing the waters. He rubs his cheek more firmly against your knee, letting you know you’ve got it right. He doesn’t like going by his hatchname some nights, but especially when he wants to play sweet.

A wave of static prickles through the air, like millions of tiny grublegs dancing on your skin. Your husktab pops up a new message.

twofoldAnnihilation: echo “hII”

“Hi yourself,” you chirr right back.

You absently draw a claw down the inside of one horn, etching the faintest line into the side. The outermost layers are still brittle and dull, but his colors have been getting more vibrant with care. When he sheds this next horn sheath you think he might have true orange underneath.

Mitun-- _Psii_ butts his head against your leg and croons.

twofoldAnnihilation: echo “are you at a stoppIIng place”  
twofoldAnnihilation: read youranswer

You close the chat window so you can even see your reader.

“No,” you tell him, slightly snippy.

You’ve made depressingly little progress on your investigation of human and carapacian culture, not just this evening but for the better part of a perigee. Meulin’s descendant assured you it’s helpful for understanding this curious world -- she and your mate have an entire mural dedicated to mapping cross-cultural exchanges. You’re the one who still mixes up where you fit (or don’t fit). There are so few trolls here and they’re always so busy; they give you nice things but nothing to _do_.  

Perhaps you sounded harsher than you intended because Psii buries his face in your strut. He hugs your calf like he thinks _you_ need soothing. What a mess of a moirail you are tonight!

“Sorry,” you say. “I don’t mean to be short.”

twofoldAnnihilation: echo “you’re always short”

You roll your ganderbulbs.

“What a novel jab. I have certainly never heard that one in any of our questionably multiplicative lives.”

You bury a hand in his unkempt hair, grooming it into little whorls around his smaller horns. Psii makes a wordless noise in the general cadence of your name. You can’t help but smile. He gets in these moods where he doesn’t like to speak (or can’t, perhaps - his neural pathways will never quite be the same.) He still makes his pleasure known.

twofoldAnnihilation: echo “would you lIIke two play a game”  
twofoldAnnihilation: read youranswer | globalthermonuclearwar  
twofoldAnnihilation: echo “;)”

You tug at one of his unruly curls.

“It seems you’ve already started without me,” you point out.

twofoldAnnihilation: if [ $youranswer = “no” ] then echo "IIt’s okay we don’t have two" fi

“I didn’t say that,” you tell him.

Long fingers circle around one of your ankles, caressing the sensitive patch just along the bone. You retaliate by rapping your knuckles up and down his horns, making him squirm in delight. His longest horns have a resonant point right around the middle that sends vibrations straight into the base.

Psii presses an open-mouthed kiss to your knee. You can feel his static thrumming all through your struts, the very air you breathe. The rain outside is nothing short of a roar.

You set your tablet aside.

“Okay,” you say, as confidently as you can. Lightning flashes outside your windows in a double-burst that has nothing to do with the storm.

You seize his sturdiest horn and pull him away from chewing on your leggings. His milky ganderbulbs literally light up, red and blue for a reality that no longer exists. Psii has terrible vision in the conventional ways - something is wrong with his third eyelids, they never draw back they way they should - but he refuses to remember his corrective visor. He swears his psionics can still pinpoint a dirt noodle through six feet of lawnring.

“Sit up,” you tell him, releasing your grip. He shuffles himself onto prong and nub to face you, chirping obediently in a way you’ve never heard from him any other time. You don’t know why this still does it for him, your voice urging him to supplication at your feet. You’ve found a lot of conflicting literature. He gets huffy when you try to discuss it.

_I juth don’t like lithening to ath-holes,_ he told you once back in the Dream. _Doethn’t mean I don’t like to lithen. Thometimeth you think too muth, KN._

He’s listening to you now. His raggedy ears are canted forward and he squints at you with rapt attention. You scoot to the edge of your seat.

You’re not sure what you want to do with him, to be honest. He likes it when you give him pain. He also likes it when you soothe. It’s a heady responsibility, being in charge. At least here there’s less chance of you making a hash of it. You make a show of giving him a good once-over, looking him up and down with all the Authority you can muster. Your diamond has collected himself into an adorable bundle kneeling precisely at the center of his pillow. His hair is already out of sorts again, puffed into a static-y cloud. You chirr for him again, lower this time. Almost the beginnings of a purr.

Psii bows his head and offers his wrists up to you side by side. You take them as gently as you can, rubbing the tender flesh with your small thumbs. A sliver of guilt twists in your digestive sac because you know what he’d prefer. But you can’t look at his prongs in shackles, you can’t you can’t you can’t, you have tried so many times.

You know what they _feel_ like. They make you...not right.

A burst of red sparks between his right-side horns and Psii makes a noise closer to an ‘oof’ than a shoosh. You appreciate the sentiment nonetheless. You squeeze his bony wrists and take a deep breath.

“I’m alright,” you assure him. “Why don’t...why don’t you get your implements?”

‘ _Implements_ ’. As though you’re about to frolic with digging tools in the lawnring. Psii doesn’t seem to mind though. His horns light all along the tips in happy blinks and his own purr kicks in, breathy but strong. He does better when he doesn’t have to connect his pan to fine motor skills like consonants. Certainly the teeth have never helped.  

You’re expecting he will get up and give you a moment to collect yourself, but you’re forgetting, this is Psii. Another pulse of overwhelming power ripples through the block, invisible and electric. You feel it like a fist around your pan. A second later your door is opening on its own and his toolbox is dumping itself out in midair.

“Lazy thing,” you chide.

A variety of cable snips rearrange themselves into a giant floating “;)”.

You look up at the rest of the tools slowly falling into orbit around the ceiling light, wire crimpers and snips and port setters and new pieces you have yet to learn. He’s assembled almost a full suite of mechanicarcerator tools, plus a few pieces you personally wanted for grooming. You badly want to take a horn shucker to his duller horns but you pulled the last sheaths only a few nights ago. Too much risk the new layers are tender. You prefer to draw sensations, not blood. And letting his horns alone presents an opportunity. You can satisfy his need to feel controlled without having to bind him. Sometimes you can be so clever!

“Hold your horns,” you instruct him. “Either set. If you need me to stop -- for any reason! --  you will let go.”

Psii whirrs in acknowledgement and tugs at your grip. Oh, yes. You suppose you have to let him go for him to comply. You release his wrists and watch with breathless fascination as he bows his fluffy head to better get a grip on his own horns. The mutated, nubby set, not his larger ones.

A shameful lick of pride laps at the base of your posture pole. You try to ignore it.

You stand and circle him, watching the way he shivers as you take deliberate, measured steps. You’re just close enough for your heat to be known to him, barely shy of brushing against him. A few tools start following you, drawn out of their orbit and into your wake like you are the greatest star in the sky.

You nudge a friendly soldering gun and set it spinning.

“Is it going to start raining pointy things if I keep going?”

Psii shakes his head. It’s adorably awkward with him still hanging on to his horns.

“Okay,” you tell him. You do trust his control. Psii may have difficulty working the ‘meatspace’ but his psionics are rock solid. Almost disturbingly so. He’s admitted that his senses extended through the whole of your hivestem at any given time; sometimes for many, many more chessblocks if he doesn’t concentrate on extending himself down through the ground. He doesn’t think he could shut it off. His body was a non-entity for so many sweeps.

He likes being made to remember it.

You draw your claws down the back of his exposed neck, coaxing him to your touch. Psii trembles.

“You won’t be multitasking for this,” you inform him. Your voice is stronger now. More leader-like.

“You won’t be sending me messages. If you need to put something down you can, but you won’t be making winky faces.”

You fist your hand into the shorter curls at the back of his head. Psii’s purr kicks into a deeper resonance.

“You’re going to be present,” you growl. “I want you to _feel this_.”

Psii hums and sways against your grip, wincing as it pulls fine hairs. Pain it is, then. You can give him pain.

You kneel down behind him and stroke your way down his back, revelling in the feel of his rumble through your prongs. You have a harder time keeping a consistent purr yourself, at least when you are focused on his needs. You have to do this right for him. He came to you. To _you_. It still takes your breath away how much he trusts you after all this time, after everything you failed to do. It hurts to even think about sometimes but...he’s your moirail.

He deserves all the good you could never give him.

You get to the base of his posture pole and consider. It was admittedly a tactical error not to have him remove his shirt before you oh-so-cleverly made him take his horns. You could tell him to do it now, but it would lessen the impact of the order. You hike the back of his tee up instead, which was already too short.

(For some reason known only to Captors, he likes to steal laundry from his descendant. You can’t tell if it’s laziness or intentional aggravation. More than once you have even seen them wearing the same shirt but in opposite sizes.)

Psii chirps and shivers as your claws find his shunts. He has ports all over but nowhere so numerous as the ones in his posture pole. Some of the oldest ones are actually metal and not bioplastic. Those you will trace with your claws but otherwise ignore. You don’t actually know enough about helmsmechanics to feel safe playing there, no matter how much he assures you they won’t conduct. His technology is such a mish-mash. It’s clear they experimented on him more than once.

You force your jaws to unclench before you grind away even more of your teeth. The C--the little heiress was kind enough to grow them back once. You don’t want to bother her again so soon.

It was hard enough seeing her once.

A shockstalk nudges you like a friendly barkbeast and you swat it away.

“Not yet,” you say. You know what he wants, but you want him warm first. There’s an order to these things and you don’t want him to flare out simply because you started too hard. You look for some clamps instead.

“Hold still,” you tell him, creaking to your feet. Perhaps you should be doing more Human Sport with your neighbors after all. It’s difficult to consider walking in the wilderness simply for fun, but you can’t deny your knees might pop less if you accompanied them on ‘hikes’. You wobble toward the tools you’re looking for, only to discover they’re hovering just a half inch beyond your reach.

“ _Psii_ ,” you warn.

His giggle-snort is still as obnoxious as ever, but he lowers the ceiling so you can select what you like.

Just for that, you maybe take a few extra things. Some heavier probes that you don’t necessarily plan on using, but will certainly make him pay attention. You know he can sense which things you’re selecting, and he visibly twitches when you pocket a rotary drill. Not that one tonight then - unless that was a good flinch?  You will have to take notes.

“I’m going to start you off easy. Okay?  It is not in either of our interests to burn you out.”

Psii nods again. He’s moved his hands to his larger horns, you notice.

“If you need to put your arms down, we can do something else,” you say, more gently. “You could spark if you need to stop.”

He shakes his head almost violently, like he’s waving himself around by his arms. Red and blue sparks dance around his elbows.

“Okay,” you shrug. If he wants to use psionics for this too, that is also his right.

You settle down behind him again, pressing a kiss just shy of his shoulder. His shirt will stay up if you clip it, you think. You roll up the edges until you can get a fat alligator clip in place, one on each side.

“Yes, they’re opposite colors,” you tell him. Red and black, not red and blue, but he chirps your praises anyway.

And now. Now, now, now.

“Slowly,” you say, both for him and yourself. You trail two claws along the wings of his scapula, watching the indicator LEDs shift. The biowire is meshed so close to the surface in his shoulders. You’ve had dreams - and daymares - of ripping it out.

“I’m giving you cold,” you croon into his ear. “I want you to picture it. Little icy grublegs prickling down your back. Can you see it?”

Psii takes a deep, shivery breath and nods. He’s doing such a good job of sitting up straight, all tall and proper like he never does. You reward him by bringing out the coolant spray.

Psii jumps and squeaks as a blast of compressed coolant splashes across his shoulder, leaving a temporary spray of white. You stroke the chilly area and hum as your heat transfers to his skin. The coolant is startling but not the most painful sensation you could offer. You’ve tried it on the insides of your legs, and his scarred back is much tougher than that. As long as you don’t hold the nozzle in one place too long, it won’t freeze.

“Cold,” you remind him again. This time you hold his hair while you spray him.

Psii twists into your grip as you tweak him all up and down his posture pole, getting him slowly accustomed to sensation. ‘Warming up by cooling down.’ You should tell him that, except the dumb joke will make him laugh, and you don’t want him to lose focus now. You can tell he’s enjoying from the cant of his hips, the way he keeps leaning forward to increase the pull on his hair. If he wanted a break, he would tip his head back to lessen the tension.

You draw a frigid patch in the shape of a diamond right between two of his larger ports. Stimulus indicators light up down to his waistband.

“Good,” you growl, setting the spray aside for now. The canister itself is starting to frost on the outside. Psii’s purr is kicking in three times as strong and you time your breaths to it, settling your own shivers. He likes it when you give him sensation. He likes it when you give him orders.

“I’m going to give you more,” you whisper. “Is that okay?”

Psii keens and dips his head. You can feel how vehemently he nods. A few of his curly hairs pull out between your fingers.

You shuffle for some socket spreaders, dropping a few in your eagerness to provide. Your own struts have gone loose and liquid, like slivers of ice are melting down the back of your own neck. It’s such a relief to be able to do this, to take him in hand and know that you can give him exactly what he needs. Your diamond could tear this hivestem apart but here, you decide what he does and feels. It’s intoxicating the way the humans’ ethanol isn’t.

You power up a midsize spreader. The ports toward the middle of his spine are the newest, self-sealing shunts made from grafts of flexible biowire ‘muscle’. You tap one with the electrified spreader and watch as its ‘lips’ peel back to reveal the socket itself. It reminds you of a sea dweller’s opercula, and...other bits that are more suited for pails than pales. Psii hums and sways as you lock the spreader in, holding the port open and exposed. An entire ring of indicator lights blazes cheerily back at you, no longer diluted by skin.

_Heat,_ he’s told you when you’ve asked what it feels like. _And tickleth? Like thanding on a ledge and your thrut podth tingle?_

He certainly seems affected. He sways back and forth humming from his purrbox, less moirailsong and more a deep, nameless croon. You bring out another spreader and his purr catches, restarts again when you have the next socket open. You open him up all the way to his shirt, skipping only the ones that are too ancient to be safe.

You tap on the edges of several of the exposed sockets. Psii raises up on his knees, crying out wordlessly. Psionics or no, he has to be getting so tired of sitting with his legs folded and his arms up over his head, but he keeps chirping enthusiastically for attention.

It would be a shame not to give it to him.

You pick up the coolant again and hold his hair tight. This time when you tease his skin it’s right at the edge of one unfurled lip. Psii yelps and shudders from horn to rump.

False lightning flashes double-time outside your window.

“Show-off,” you smile. You hit him again - this time on the rim of a socket itself.

All around the block, tools are starting to spin slowly to the floor. They alight wherever they can, on your bookshelves, your ‘coon, any remotely non-breakable plane. You spray a concentrated circle around and around each port. Just until the temperature sensors blink cyan; not so cool that any turn indigo. He taught you specifically how to read his limits; he was built to be injected with coolant. He likes it when you bring him feeling through the scar tissue.

( _he was built_ )

You pause to scritch your claws against his scalp until he’s impatiently butting your hand for more.

More, you can give him. You work him up until his purr sounds like a well-tuned four-wheel device and then you let him rest again. All the ports on his back are lit up like fireworks on a fifth dark season’s equinox. You feel like you could see him from space. His eyes are so bright they cast strange shadows on your wall.

“Are you ready?” you growl.

He makes a wordless, pleading groan.

You pocketed a rotary drill to mess with him, but it’s the shockstalk you feel more comfortable reaching for. You’re moving beyond the realm of what the tech was designed for and what is simply a flagrant misuse. Tonight, you’d feel safer with tools you’ve misused more often.

Not that you can’t have some fun with the drill in a different way. You pull out the rotary drill and the shockstalk in the same hand to confuse his psionic radar and power up both tools at once. The drill has a distinctive whine that instantly has Psii drawing up straighter, clearly bracing himself for vibration in his ports.

When you flick the live shockstalk near his skin instead, sparks fly from the tips of his horns.

“Got you,” you grin, stroking his neck.

Psii snorts and extends two middle fingers while keeping the rest firmly clasped on his horns. You chirp and shock him again for his trouble.

It’s not an excruciating sting, just an intense one. Anywhere from a fizzy tickle to a lingering ache, depending on the setting. Psii modified it for you, he’s checked it a thousand times to assure you it can’t easily do damage. Still. You turn off the drill and set it aside so you can concentrate.

The shockstalk is long and thin as a datagrub feeler, slightly squishier to the touch. It’s meant to feed into the biomesh...somehow. Psii won’t tell you everything about his ‘maintenance’. There are things he has trouble speaking about even with a keyboard. All you know is that if you hold its tubular tip near his body it draws a burst of energy. You summon a spark at the fleshy part of his low back (well, as fleshy as Psii gets) and he actually calls for you out loud.

“Pleathe,” he breathes, twisting his hands around his horns.

“I got you,” you tell him again. Not in jest this time, but a promise.

You flick the shockstalk near the sheath of a port, creating another pop of energy.The port’s lips twitch but with the spreader in place they can’t close. Psii bows forward and keens.

“Okay?” you ask.

He nods his head like he means to nod it off. Indicator lights are switching on from his ribs to his posture pole, hundreds of twinkling lights along his skin.

He gets pent up so easily.

Time to let it out.

You don’t hold his hair this time because you want a prong to keep him steady. You hang onto his shoulder instead and trace entirely around a port. A continuous ripple of red and blue lightning dances between the shockstalk and his skin, setting him gasping in obvious delight. Your moirail is so powerful and this is scarcely a glimpse of his full power, but something about siphoning like this makes him happier than any shielded rig.

It’s like Faygo, he’s told you, like something effervescent and _happy._ When you hold him and make it tingle, make it loving and caring and intimate, it reminds him he’s more than a battery.

You move to the next port down. You can feel him relaxing by inches, soothed by the crackle and and the endorphins you are drawing out. When you kick it up a notch he stiffens, then sways into you harder.

“Shoosh,” you tell him. “That’s it.”

You take a deep breath and push the shockstalk into the center of a socket.

A cacophonous sizzle erupts as the stalk draws energy from all sides of the port at once. Every light blazes purple at once and Psii wails, loud and long.

You whip the tool away.

“Is that okay?”

Psii groans something that could be ‘uh-huh’ or it could be ‘uh-uh’. It’s hard to tell through his gasping purr.

“I’m sorry, I can’t hear.”

“ _Yeth_ ,” Psii spits out. “Ith good, yeth.”

He straightens up again somewhat. As near as he can, you suspect, after so much good posture. You squeeze his shoulder and ask him if he’s ready. He tell you ‘of courth’ and blows you a raspberry.

You kindly wait for him to rescind his rude gesture so he won’t bite his own tongue when you hit the next socket.

You keep teasing down each port in turn, tracing them with light sensation, finishing with a hard surge. The static in the block is starting to build to record levels, lifting up the edges of your own spiky hair. Psii’s mane is already a hopeless hopbeast-tail. Each release you pull from him leaves him breathless and hiccuping between purr cycles, like he doesn’t know if he wants to beg or purr.

“Shoosh,” you tell him again. You kiss the sweat from his shoulder. “You’re doing so, so well.”

Your beautiful, literally sparkling diamond. His entire existence begs the world for pity, and yet after everything, he still wants _you_.

Psii chirrs like he’s been into the good sopor. His grip on his horns is starting to slip. You can’t tell if he’s approaching his limit, or simply tired of holding his arms up. He doesn’t seem to be focused enough to be using his psionics to support himself anymore.

You...maybe are a little proud of distracting him that much.

“Big finish now,” you promise. You want to make it good. Eternal insomnia is apparently a hatched-in Captor trait but he always sleeps well after a siphoning. You might even convince him to cuddle on an actual conciliatory couch like a reasonable moirail!

Psii nods dreamily, leaning into your touch. You give him one more kiss and slot the shockstalk into the uppermost socket.

This time, you don’t give him a breather between each port. You play his entire back like a musical hammer device, dragging the shockstalk quickly from one socket to the next without any breaks in between. Psii shrieks and bows back like there’s a cord from his horns to his heels. Everything is a blaze of red and blue and purple light. Something flashes - one-two, one-two - and then there an explosive clap of thunder.

Outside your window, there is a pusher-stopping moment where the rain pauses and falls _upwards_.

Oh shit. Oh shit oh _shit._

“Are you okay!?” you yelp.

Psii nods and chirps happily enough, but you can’t - you can’t stop seeing the way he arched. His body silhouetted against the light. He lists against you, panting, and it’s like you can’t get enough air either. You keep holding your breath to listen to him purr.

The shockstalk tumbles from your hand. You try to catch it, but your fingers are five nubs of ice.

A moment passes. Maybe a few. Psii makes an inquisitive sound and nudges you.

You can practically see the ‘read answer’ in the air.

“Sorry,” you say, wincing.

And it’s stupid, you can hear him purring. He’s even got his hands on his horns. It was clearly intense, but he’s clearly okay.

He’s okay, but. But.

“I think that’s enough for tonight,” you tell him. “Is that okay?  You did so well. I promise. I’m just...having a moment.”

Psii nudges you again, purring even louder. You squeeze his shoulder and stroke his sweaty flank.

“I’m going to take the spreaders out,” you say. “Give me a minute?”

He nods and curls forward to let you.

Gently, you decouple the spreaders one socket at a time, stroking each port as it seals up. Your fingers are still clumsy but the yammering panic is starting to loosen in your chest. So ridiculous that you managed to frighten yourself by playing with your moirail. You are almost embarrassed to exist.

When you reach up to tug his hands away from his horns, Psii catches your hands.

“Eathy,” he says, squeezing your fingers.

You are definitely embarrassed to sniffle.

Psii lets you go and twists around so he can face you. His shirt is still all tied up beneath his armpits and it looks absolutely ridiculous, but he doesn’t even bother to fix it. He cups your face in his big, spindly hands and strokes the secret places beneath your jaw.

“I’m okay,” you tell him again.

Your husktab floats its way off the end table toward you. You glance at the message waiting on your lockscreen.

twofoldAnnihilation: echo “you don’t always have two be”  
twofoldAnnihilation: echo “II’m not”  
twofoldAnnihilation: echo “II’m just glad we’re here”

You reach for your diamond and he lets you pull him into an embrace. The two of you settle curled up beneath the end table, wedged against the couch in a tight press of limbs. You know he needs comfort after such intense sensation. To be honest, so do you.

“It was fun,” you whisper. “I’m sorry I get weird about it, sometimes.”

Ps--Mituna hums and shakes his head, hugging you closer. His purr reverberates all the way through your chest. It makes your own little purrbox catch.

twofoldAnnihilation: echo “II understand”  
twofoldAnnihilation: echo “II can’t even talk two certaIIn trolls”  
twofoldAnnihilation: echo “even when II know IIt makes no sense”  
twofoldAnnihilation: pkill -u cuttlefishCuller  
twofoldAnnihilation: echo “sometIImes II just get so ANGRY”

You nod reluctantly.

“Me too,” you admit.

And scared. And a thousand other things that are just different, when you’ve died and been a ghost and now life doesn’t feel quite real all the time. Some night you’re going to have to talk about how honestly, you know you don’t leave this hive enough. How maybe there is more you could do for Mituna’s coordination, if only you both weren’t scared shitless of the little heiresses.

How sometimes -- most of the time -- you still feel superfluous.

For now, the combined strength of both your purrs is lulling you to sleep. Your husktab vibrates somewhere off to the side, but you don’t have the energy to look for it. Your face is buried in your moirail’s chest.

You don’t see his message until the next night, but when you do, you smile.

twofoldAnnihilation: while true; do   
twofoldAnnihilation: echo “<>”  
twofoldAnnihilation: done

  
  



End file.
